All The Latest!
Posted by Lise in ebooks, Giveaways, Uncategorized on Sep 22, 2014
Here’s my new newsletter. Are you signed up? One subscriber won a $25 gift card today! Sign up here.
The Quickie Issue
Welcome new subscribers!
For the rest of you, you just heard from me so I’ll make this quick.
Back in olden times (say, two years ago) giving away free e-books was pretty common.
I rarely do it anymore! So enjoy this special from me.
All Your Pretty Dreams is a straight novel, that is, not a mystery. It’s a novel of my heart, one I really wanted to write. I had an idea years ago to write a pastiche of my favorite novel, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I first read P&P in high school English and have re-read it many times since becoming a bit of a Jane-ite (an Austen fan girl!). When I decided to write a pastiche, a take-off, of the book I wanted to put my own spin on it. It would be a gender-reverse story, where the rude outsider (Mr. Darcy in P&P) is female, and the main character with the large, embarrassing family (like Elizabeth Bennett) would be male.
The setting here isn’t England but rural Minnesota, the German-Catholic part, where I visited once with my good friend Susan. Why? Because what could be more embarrassing to a hip young man than growing up in a polka band?! Jonny learned to play accordion at his grandfather’s knee then rejected it all for a career in the Twin Cities. But when the band’s accordionist is out sick Jonny is called back to play at Polka Mass. He meets the women staying at the family motel, working on a field study. Their leader, a grad student named Isabel, is rude and full of herself. And so it begins…
The quirky characters in the novel have been compared to Anne Tyler’s, an assortment of small-town oddballs. One reviewer said: “
The family struggles, sad times and funny times were so real to life anyone could enjoy this book.” Another wrote: “Lise McClendon has a gift for writing fully developed, multi-layered characters dealing with the same problems that we all do, and yet seeming so unique and distinctive.”
For the true hard-core Pride and Prejudice fans I found this multi-author e-book that supposedly fills in the gaps in the novel fascinating but a little spotty on quality: Pride and Prejudice: The Scenes Jane Austen Never Wrote.
And if you’ve never read Pride and Prejudice we must remedy that. Here’s a free Kindle version.
Stay tuned later this fall for the Bennett Sisters novella, “Give Him That Ooh-la-la.”
